Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Genetic Science (vs. Dictated Equality)

What should be common sense now has a scientific datum:
Genes influence academic ability across all subjects, latest study shows

Around 60% of differences in GCSE results can be explained by genetic factors, with the same genes responsible for maths, science and the humanities


"Robert Plomin, a professor of genetics at King’s College London and the study’s senior author, said: “We found that academic achievement in English, mathematics, science, humanities, second languages and art were all affected by the same genes. People may think that they’re good at one subject and bad at another, but in reality most people are strikingly consistent.”

In the future, if specific genes were identified, nursery children could be screened to help target those who are likely to require more help learning basic skills such as reading and arithmetic, Plomin added.

Results in all subjects, including maths, science, art and humanities, were highly heritable, with genes explaining a bigger proportion of the differences between children (54-65%) than environmental factors, such as school and family combined (14-21%), which were shared by the twins."

Comparing the outcomes for identical twins with fraternal twins allows scientists to investigate the extent to which genetics influence a person’s life. Identical twins share 100% of their genes, whereas fraternal twins share on average only half of the genes that differ between people.

So if genetics were a significant factor governing GCSE results, the differences between fraternal twins’ performances would be expected to be consistently greater than those between identical twins – and this is what the scientists saw.

When the scientists factored in IQ scores, they found that intelligence appeared to account for slightly less than half of the genetic component, suggesting that other heritable traits – curiosity, determination and memory, perhaps – play a significant role.

Kaili Rimfeld, who led the study and is also at King’s College London, said: “There’s a general academic achievement factor. Children who do well in one subject tend to better in another subject and that is largely for genetic reasons.”

Plomin said that while talking about genetics and education was no longer the taboo that it was twenty years ago, education professionals were slow to adapt teaching methods in the face of new scientific findings. “It’s a problem with evidence,” he said. “Thirty years ago medicine wasn’t particularly evidence-based. I think education is fundamentally not based on evidence. What programme has been rolled out that has been based on evidence? We ought to hold educationalists to the same standards of evidence as medicine.”
If this is replicated properly, then there is a secondary conclusion: not all people are equal in their intellectual and cognitive abilities. So declaring equality is ideological, not rational. The next step in such an investigation would include genetic achievement differences within races, sexes, ideological classes, and between races, sexes, ideological classes; that would be too controversial and would not happen under current political correctness. There are some truths which may not be spoken.

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